City Colleges Face Challenge

Scandal Called A Test Of Progress

April 09, 1989|By Patrick Reardon.

Standing alone on the stage of the Malcolm X College auditorium, school President Milton Brown looked out at 700 students, faculty and staff and, for the first time, publicly discussed the ouster of nine of his veteran teachers. The day before, City Colleges of Chicago officials had announced that an internal investigation had determined that the nine had given high grades to students who never showed up for class. Faced with disciplinary action, seven of the teachers, including the baseball and basketball coaches, resigned or retired. One was fired, and one was suspended without pay while dismissal proceedings against him continue.

It was, without question, a scandal, but Brown saw it as something else as well.

``We have a challenge in front of us that begins today and begins right now,`` he told those attending the hastily called all-school meeting Friday,

``and that is to learn from this.

``This is real education, folks. This is the time for us to find out what we are. This is the time to commit ourselves to being the best. We`re at a crossroads.``

So, too, is the new administration of the City Colleges.

The grade-falsification scandal is the first to face the City Colleges system since Nelvia M. Brady took over as chancellor and Reynaldo Glover as board chairman last summer.

Some officials in the college system, which has been plagued by such problems in the past, fear that the reaction to the present scandal will be:

``There they go again.``

But, like Brown, Glover and Brady see the case in a different light. They contend that it indicates the administration`s commitment to put students first and its willingness to weed out bad apples.

At Malcolm X, Ron Thigpin, a 21-year-old second-year student in business administration, is one of many students worried about how the scandal may affect him.

``When you try to transfer to one of the universities, it might look bad on your record,`` Thigpin said.

``It`s going to be a stain on the school. They`ve got to prove themselves.``

Glover bristles at such talk.

In an interview Friday, he said, ``There are not problems at Malcolm X. There were nine individuals who didn`t follow the rules and the policies. That is not a Malcolm X problem. That is a problem for the nine individuals.

``My concern is that we`re talking about a scandal or a condition at Malcolm X, but that`s simply the location where it occurred.``

Glover also seemed to downplay the seriousness of the case.

``I don`t regard the people involved as evil,`` he said. ``They were just people who violated the rules. They violated the rules in a very significant way.``

From the beginning the case has been shrouded in secrecy, and to a considerable extent it still is. So it`s difficult to determine just how serious the wrongdoing was.

The few facts that have been made public by officials are these:

In late August, a male student wrote a letter to the Malcolm X administration charging that grades were being sold for sex.

That allegation turned out to be false-or, at least, the internal investigation conducted by college system authorities failed to find any substantiation for it. Neither did that investigation find any evidence of drugs or money being exchanged for grades.

What it did find, officials say, was that nine teachers were allegedly giving grades-high grades-to students who were rarely, if ever, in class. Some of those students, in fact, weren`t students at all, but school ``operatives`` masquerading as students for the purpose of the investigation.

Authorities have refused to discuss how a teacher would benefit from such a scheme if money, drugs and sex weren`t involved. The case, however, is now under investigation by the U.S. attorney`s office, which would have jurisdiction since the school receives federal money.

In an interview, Brown, who came to Malcolm X from New York in January, contended that it was ``a very positive thing`` that a student felt

``confident enough to come forward and tell us about something wrong`` and that the system followed through with an investigation.

The case, he said, ``sends a message that we`re serious about our commitment to students and to education. At least, I hope it does.

``But, beyond just this specific incident, I hope it begins to re-establish, if that`s needed, or more fully establish the credibility of City Colleges and of Malcolm X College.``

Both Malcolm X and the City Colleges have had rough years recently. A 2.3 percent increase in college-credit students this spring was the first for the City Colleges after four years of eroding enrollments.

``Malcolm had experienced a series of enrollment declines,`` Brown said.

``It had suffered from a negative perception with regard to the quality and seriousness of the program.``

The grade-falsification scandal, however, may give ``impetus to the need for us to come together and work together to rebuild this institution.``